Climate chief bucks official view on fossil fuels

Oliver Yates headed Macquarie Group’s utilities and climate change group and has led international project initiatives in renewable industries such as wind, solar, carbon capture and storage and biofuels.
Photo: Reuters

The federal government’s climate commissioner says the economy could be powered “almost entirely by renewable energy" in coming decades, contrary to the government’s energy white paper, which says fossil fuels will provide most of our electricity for the next 20 years.

Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery calls for a large and sustained expansion in renewable investment, in a report to be released today.

It comes as the government appointed former Macquarie Group executive director Oliver Yates as inugural chief executive of the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Corporation chairman and Reserve Bank board member
Jillian Broadbent
announced the decision yesterday, before the release of a Climate Commission report on renewable energy in Sydney today.

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“Mr Yates has over 20 years of global experience in corporate advisory, financial structuring, project finance, debt structuring, equity raising and listings, with many years’ experience in clean energy," a Treasury announcement said.

The corporation’s job is to investigate emerging renewable and clean technologies that would otherwise have difficulty securing private or start-up funding. It can start investing from July next year.

Mr
Flannery’s
report says that while renewables are becoming a larger part of the energy production mix, “problems – such as distributing power and meeting peak demand – will need to be solved in order to achieve more substantial and rapid growth," the report says.

The energy white paper, released two weeks ago, says coal and gas will dominate electricity generation, with renewables providing half that generation by 2050.

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Mr Yates led Macquarie Group’s utilities and climate change group and has run international project initiatives in wind, solar, biofuels and carbon capture and storage. He will join two former Macquarie Group colleagues,
Michael Carapiet
and Anna Skarbek, former Origin Energy executive general manager
Andrew Stock
, and a former head of Bankers Trust’s corporate finance division, Ian Moore, on the board.

The International Energy Agency said last week that efforts to develop carbon capture and storage were “critical" if renewable energy targets were to be met globally. It said that government funding for research and development of renewable projects, through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, was important, although the corporation has confirmed it will not fund projects relating to carbon capture and ­storage.

Plans are under way to ensure the corporation can start investing in projects from July next year, despite a pledge by Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
that he will disband the fund, which was developed as part of the government’s clean energy policy.

Mr Yates is listed as a director of boutique corporate advisory firm Driftwood Capital and is a former acting chairman of ASX-listed diversified energy company Linc Energy.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is expected to work in tandem with the $3.2 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency, which comes under the remit of the Department of Energy and Resources, rather than the Department of Climate Change.